


Searching For You

by QuickSilverFox3



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Minor Goodnight Robicheaux/Billy Rocks, Outer Space, Pre-Relationship, Red String of Fate, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24092023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickSilverFox3/pseuds/QuickSilverFox3
Summary: Red Harvest has a soul mate. He know that means he is one of the lucky ones, but he can never see them. At least not in only one lifetime.
Relationships: Red Harvest & Billy Rocks, Red Harvest/Jack Horne
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Searching For You

**Author's Note:**

> 97 (Time Travel) & 64 (Star Crossed Lovers), Red Harvest x Jack Horne for anon on tumblr. Thank you again for the prompt, although I think I've taken some creative liberties with how it's been applied ^^

The stars burned their light into Red Harvest’s eyes. The men he had thrown his lot in with didn’t trust him, and he didn’t blame them. The taste of iron was thick on his tongue, but what choked his words down was the weight of the vow he had made. Cold air pricked at his skin, colder for the darkness that surrounded him, and he pulled the only blanket he was able to take tighter around his shoulders. It smelled of sweet woodsmoke and the bitter undertones of the herbs his mother crushed into tinctures when he was sick, tears pricking at his eyes at the memory.

Scrubbing at the offending tears, he sat up slightly, peering cautiously towards the firelight, warm and golden and terrifying in it’s closeness. It glinted off the polished barrels of their guns, worn like trophies on their hips, or placed carefully beside them as they slept. But none were watching him, intent on pretending he wasn’t there until he proved either asset or threat.

His thread was warm beneath his fingers, a steady pulse rattling through the red silk like a heartbeat. All the stories said that his soulmate was at the end of the thread, someone who would stay by his side until the end of his life. If he could find them first. Threads could be blackened, they could rot, they could never appear. But none of the stories ever mentioned a thread that stretched into the sky.

Red settled against the stone, and concentrated on the thread in his fingers, mind growing calm and quiet until…

The mind that nudged against his own felt sad, sorrow washing through Red’s veins, teeth sinking into his palm to keep from crying out. At the flash of pain, reverberating through their bond, amplified by the distance between them, his soulmate retreated; and Red dived after them. He threw the taste of blood in his mouth, the worry gnawing through his stomach, the chill of stone against his back, and his concern for the unknown being on the other end of his thread. They didn’t share a common language, so Red’s love was half constructed of images and sensations.

Warmth rushed through him, fur warm against his skin. Water dripped slowly into a bowl, the sound filling his chest with a foregin peace — a peace that had been learned rather than known, the contrast between the rage Red carried with him causing guilt to twist his stomach. Red Harvest fell asleep on that first night with those new strangers with love in his heart and strange images behind closed eyelids.

When Red Harvest died — Denali’s arrow piercing his chest even as Red Harvest drove his blade deeper into the man’s throat, coating them both in crimson blood — he sent one final thought to the soulmate he would never meet:  _ I’m sorry _ .

⁂

Red Harvest’s next life greeted him with warfare and a string that didn’t appear until the moment of his death, flickering into being and stretching out into the sky as the world faded into grey.

⁂

For his next life, his thread was blackened and dead when it materialised. But it still stretched into the stars, and Red knew he had to wait, had to continue this strange cycle of lives until he was able to meet them.

⁂

“Stars again Red?”

Red bared his teeth at Billy but couldn’t do anything else, held in place by the experienced hands of the tattoo artist, and the needle driving ink into his flesh.

“It’s traditional, you dick, and you know it,” Red grunted out. Countless times he’d marked his skin with the same pattern, ever since he was able to peer through a telescope — stolen at first, then later bought with whatever money he could scrape together — at the end point of his thread. With Billy’s hands in his — not flinching even as Red’s nails carved tiny half moons out of his skin — Red could see his thread. It was black and dead in this life, but Billy had never uttered a word of protest, of regret.

Red managed to ask the question brewing in his throat for lifetimes that night, tattoo wrapped in plastic, smoke heavy in his lungs.

“Is it all worth it?”

“Yes,” Billy answered, resting his head on Red’s shoulder to stare up at the stars where Red’s soulmate lived, “I’ve been with Goodnight in a thousand lifetimes now, and I treasure every moment I get with him.”

Red breathed out slowly, a weight constricting his lungs, and reached out his mind to his soulmate, feeling the excitement and pure love travel back from them. 

Soon. He would meet them soon.

⁂

Recycled air stuck in his lungs, electricity crackled through Red’s veins making him fidget and shift as they waited in the airlock. His soulmate was hiding something from him, steering Red’s curious feelings to one side with endless streams of chanted words, looping round and round and filling Red’s mind until he couldn’t hear himself think. The image — just behind his eyes and stronger than ever, almost blotting out the featureless grey metal door in front of him — was a riot of colour: strange plants he didn’t know the names of, but knew the sensation of them beneath his hands, knew their sweetness between his teeth, grew climbing around the tallest trees he head ever seen; and in the middle was their ship, battered and beaten from the long journey but the name was still clearly written on the side: Romeo. Billy had laughed himself sick when he had heard, and a pang of loss hit Red. 

Billy had been unwilling to leave Earth before he had found Goodnight again, so he waved Red goodbye for possibly the final time.

The doors opened with a hiss, and — as the crowd surged out around him, politicians already beginning their photo ops — Red found himself drawn to the side, approaching a man head and shoulders taller than he was, beard white as snow.

“Jack Horne,” the man said, holding out his hand to Red, matching red thread tied around his finger, proud flush on his cheeks as he carefully sounded out the words.

“Red Harvest,” came the reply as, for the first time in countless lifetimes, Red took hold of his soulmate's hand.

**Author's Note:**

> [ My Tumblr!](https://inkformyblood.tumblr.com) Requests are always welcome!  
> [Trope mash up list!](https://inkformyblood.tumblr.com/post/615200731645050880/fanfiction-trope-mash-up)  
> 


End file.
